Rocks Stars Are Great Keynote Speakers, But Roadies Do The Work

One of the great indie sci-fi indie movies of all time, “Dark Star,” includes the great lines, “…don’t give me any of that sentient life crap. Find me something I can blow up!” Sometimes it seems as if this ethos informs much of the media coverage of the energy industry. The flashy and the sexy get much more attention than the mundane business of producing energy, but this seriously misleads observers, and even insiders, as to industry trends.

Having worked on a number of energy conferences, it is always funny to watch how others choose speakers. My theory has always been that you should invite one or two prominent individuals who will attract an audience but probably not say anything interesting, and fill out the program with mostly junior people doing actual research who can provide substance and hopefully wisdom.

There is a third path, which is to look for rock stars. The classic case is described by Brian Blum in Totaled, where attendees at a 2006 Saban Forum ignored energy expert Daniel Yergin but were “mesmerized” by Shai Agassi, who laid out a business plan that would allow Israel to end its dependence on foreign oil. It was easy and unavoidable, he insisted. The plan: building a series of stations with machinery to swap out battery packs from electric vehicles instead of recharging them while the driver waited. The problem: numerous legal, technical and economic hurdles were far beyond the capability of a startup to overcome (and perhaps anyone).

Going for a rock star has dangers, of course. There was some pushback on the Internet recently when an energy conference being held at M.I.T. announced that Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson would be one of the keynote speakers. Jacobson made headlines by, first, claiming that 100% reliance on renewable energy was quite possible, and then by his threat to sue other scholars who argued that his research was flawed. Perhaps the M.I.T. conference organizers were thinking that any publicity is good publicity, and their audience would want to hear from such a speaker, even if he is more infamous than famous.

No question but that audiences (and readers) prefer to hear about exciting new technologies, revolutions in the industry, or looming catastrophe instead of business as usual. Unfortunately, this sometimes influences investors and policymakers who take clichés as scientific pronouncements and pour money into questionable investments, such as Solyndra, Fisker Automotive and far too many others.

How to be a popular keynote speaker? First, don’t sweat the details. If you’re promising the moon, nobody wants to know how much thrust the rocket needs. Second, go big or go home. Don’t offer ways to reduce emissions, insist that they can be eliminated. Third, morals trump economics every time. Your solution costs too much? Hey, you’re saving the Earth (or better, Mother Earth). Fourth, be a shining knight fighting the dragon. If nobody buys your hyperexpensive vehicle, it’s a conspiracy by the oil industry. Fifth, ignore context, especially when your audience doesn’t know the context. We need to spend $1 trillion over the next decade on oil supply sounds daunting—if people don’t know that’s the amount we’re already spending.

An uncritical audience is always hard to guarantee, but wonderful to find. People who won’t realize that “companies are interested in” translates into “nobody’s buying it yet,” or “stable government policies are necessary” is the equivalent of “this is uneconomic and needs subsidies,” and best of all, “the change is inevitable,” which stands in for “I can’t explain how this will happen.” Best of all, of course, is to have an audience that doesn’t recognize your promises as nothing new, that electric vehicles have repeatedly been on the verge of commercialization, that the end of the oil industry has been foretold many times, that revolution in the utility business has been promised as far back as Edison and Tesla. Worst is to have a scholar familiar with the phrase, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

I spent nearly 30 years at MIT as a student and then researcher at the Energy Laboratory and Center for International Studies. I then spent several years at what is now IHS Global Insight and was chief energy economist. Currently, I am president of Strategic Energy and Econo...